It's easier to pin the blame on others

April is the cruelest month. Alright, it's still March (just), but I've been feeling gloomy and decided to come up with this.

Books that have influenced my life, part the first:
The Trumpet-Major, by Thomas Hardy

I didn't say that I had to like the book, although this isn't bad and I quite like Hardy's novels in general. But this is the novel that we had to study at school for O-Level English literature.

The hero loves the heroine, but the heroine loves the hero's brother. The hero therefore restrains his passions, and rescues the heroine from the local ruffian for the sake of the somewhat unfaithful brother. The brother marries the heroine, the ruffian marries someone else, and the hero goes off to be killed in Spain.

At the time I had a hopeless teenage crush on the girl with long brown hair who sat by the window. She had a sister called Anne, which is the name of the heroine in the book. It was not, therefore, a huge leap of the 15-year-old imagination to cast myself as the silent, unappreciated trumpet-major.

I actually plucked up the courage to send the girl with long brown hair who sat by the window a valentine card. It was anonymous, of course. That's a tradition that I find both touchingly sweet and terribly frustrating, depending on whether I am the perpetrator or the victim.

Anyway, the girl with long brown hair who sat by the window naturally wanted to know the identity of the admiring would-be Valentino, and set off round the class asking each boy if he had sent her the card. She had nearly reached me. My hands were trembling. And then the guy next to me told her that he had sent it. He claimed the credit and got the reward. The trumpet-major remained silent.

I learned that good guys suffer in silence. I learned that liars, scoundrels, and bits of rough prosper and get the girl every time. I learned, oh how I learned.

Thank you, Thomas Hardy.